Manuscripts in the making

The Hours of Isabella Stuart

France, Angersc. 1431MS 62

One of the most extensively illustrated Books of Hours in existence, this volume contains a unique, highly personalised combination of images and texts. It was completed by 1431 for the learned and powerful Duchess of Anjou, Yolande of Aragon. Over the next three decades, the manuscript belonged to three other women and was continuously adapted to suit their devotional needs and dynastic aspirations.

The manuscript received over 500 figural scenes and ornamentation on every page. It was illuminated by professional artists working in Angers for Yolande of Aragon, Dowager Duchess of Anjou. She probably gave the volume to her daughter, Yolande of Anjou, around the time of her marriage to the future Duke Francis I of Brittany in 1431. After her death, the volume came into the possession of Francis’ second wife, Isabella Stuart, and then passed on to their daughter, Margaret of Brittany. Breton artists working in Nantes adapted and added illuminations for Isabella and Margaret. Variations in the underdrawings help to distinguish between the original artists based in Angers. The use of different pigments confirms the modifications and additions made in Nantes.

Learn more about the manuscript by exploring the sections below or selecting folios on the right. Discover further details by choosing any of the folios with the hotspot symbol .

Three main artists – the Giac, Rohan and Madonna Masters – and their assistants completed the illumination in Angers by 1431.

Collectively known as the Rohan Masters, they represented a sophisticated artistic style dominant across Europe in the decades c. 1400 and known as International Gothic. They may have begun work on the extensive and complex illustrative programme, comprising over 500 miniatures, in the 1420s. A starting date after 1417 is suggested by depictions of a widowed woman and the inclusion of motifs from the Limbourg brothers’ works. Yolande of Aragon’s husband, Louis II of Anjou, died in 1417. The same year, she purchased one of the Limbourg brothers’ manuscripts, the Duke of Berry’s Belles Heures (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters Collection, MS 54.1.1). In the 1440s and 1450s, artists working in Nantes amended and added images for Isabella Stuart and Margaret of Brittany.

During the first twenty-five years of its existence, the manuscript was associated with four distinguished women: Yolande of Aragon (1381-1442), Duchess of Anjou; her daughter, Yolande of Anjou (1412-1440); Isabella Stuart (1427-after 1494); and her daughter, Margaret of Brittany (1443-1469). It belonged to the Isambert Family of Paris from 1578 until 1619. Richard, VII Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion (1745-1816), acquired the manuscript in 1808 and bequeathed it to the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1816.

This extraordinarily complex manuscript combines the standard texts and images for Books of Hours with other, less common devotional texts and four extensive pictorial cycles of marginal miniatures.

Large miniatures, mostly depicting events from the lives of Christ and the Virgin, and elaborate ornamental initials filled with foliage mark major text divisions. Smaller miniatures showing Christ and the saints illustrate prayers. Less important texts open with small gold, blue or pink initials with foliate or geometric infill. Every page has borders of delicate spraywork with gold leaves and a marginal miniature.

The marginal miniatures belong to four cycles that illustrate texts not included in the volume, but popular at the ducal court in Angers. The four texts that inspired these pictorial cycles are the Apocalypse and three allegorical poems composed in French by Guillaume de Deguileville (1295-died after 1358): Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ, Pilgrimage of the Human Life and Pilgrimage of the Soul. The marginal scenes that draw on these poems and the Apocalypse are carefully aligned with the themes of the main texts and images.

The three main artists, as well as their assistants, used the same pigments throughout the manuscript. Their palette is dominated by ultramarine, malachite, red lead, lead white, brown earth and an insect-based organic pink. It is occasionally supplemented with vermilion, azurite, organic green, yellow ochre, mosaic gold and a light purple admixture of an organic dye and ultramarine. This rich colour scheme is set against a range of metals: gold leaf, shell gold and silver.

Slight differences in the use of blue pigments help to differentiate the assistants’ work from that of their masters. The later modifications and additions on fols. 20r and 28r are also characterised by a slightly different palette.

The main artists employed similar painting materials and techniques, but differed in their use of underdrawing and in their preparation or application of the same pigments. For instance the Rohan Master’s white areas show an identical pattern of flaking and so do the Giac Master’s blue pigments, while neither seems to have caused problems in the Madonna Master’s images. The uneven behaviour of the same materials may be due to different methods of preparation or application of the paint, such as individual approaches to the priming of the parchment surface or the painting of the base colour layers, varying proportions of pigment to binder, selective use of distinct binders for specific pigments, or a combination of these factors.

Detail of the edge of St Catherine’s blue robe under magnification (20x), showing a small triangular portion of the Virgin’s blue robe, which originally extended to the left edge of the image, painted underneath the white frame of the miniature (see hotspot 2).

SWIR image of the reverse of the miniature on fol. 20r, flipped left-to-right to facilitate comparisons. The image clearly reveals that the Virgin’s robe originally extended to the left edge of the miniature (see hotspot 1), and St Catherine was absent from the composition.

Detail of Isabella Stuart’s overpainted head dress under magnification (7.5x).

Folio 20 r

The Virgin and Child with a patron (prayer Obsecro te)

The marginal scene showing Christ’s encounter with the devil belongs to the cycle illustrating the Pilgrimage of Jesus Christ. The arms of Isabella Stuart have been added to the border. Her portrait was painted over that of the original patron kneeling before the Virgin and Child. The overpainting was done in two stages. During the first stage Isabella’s face and heraldic dress were painted over the original ones, and the figure of St Catherine was added (hotspots 1 and 2). The red of Isabella’s ermine-lined coat (cotte) is the same pigment, vermilion, as that used for her arms in the border, while the original red elsewhere on the page – in the main image, the marginal miniature and the floral border – is red lead. St Catherine’s garments were painted in insect-based organic pink and ultramarine blue, except the darker, oval area behind Isabella’s head which was painted in azurite instead. It conceals the head dress of the original patron, which Isabella retained at first. During the second stage of overpainting, the head dress was covered with azurite and Isabella’s ducal coronet was painted over it (hotspot 3). The latter change is clearly visible in the near-infrared image (see Infrared Layer).

The alterations were most probably commissioned by Isabella’s husband-to-be, Francis I of Brittany. The first step – the overpainting of what was probably the portrait of his first wife, Yolande of Anjou, and the addition of St Catherine and of Isabella’s arms – would have been prompted by preparations for Francis’ wedding to Isabella on 29 October 1442. On 29 August 1442, Francis succeeded to the duchy of Brittany and Isabella’s coronet must have been added after that point, since she would have become a duchess upon her marriage two months later.